Climate Change Brings Visitors to Parks Earlier

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As climate changes, animals' seasonal habits shift: Flowers bloom
earlier in spring, birds change the timing of their migrations,
hibernating mammals emerge earlier. Now, researchers have found
what they say is evidence of a similar shift in humans.

They found that peak attendance in
U.S. National Parks in which spring is getting warmer has
shifted more than four days earlier since 1979.

"While the occurrence of global warming continues to be debated
by the public, our analysis suggests that we are already
responding to climate change," the researchers, Lauren Buckley
and Madison Foushee of the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, wrote in a study published online Nov. 23 in the
International Journal of Biometeorology.

They used attendance data from 27 of 55 national parks from 1979
to 2008, excluding those parks that did not experience strong
seasonal shifts in park attendance, those who started out in 1979
with relatively few visitors, and those with seasonal visitor
patterns determined by limits placed by the park service, such as
cave tour reservations.

They compared this with temperature data for the same years from
April through May, since the earlier arrival of spring warming is
typical of climate change and predicts
shifts in many organisms' seasonal clocks.

Nine of the parks experienced significant increases in mean
spring temperatures, and seven also exhibited shifts in the time
of peak attendance. Among these seven parks, peak attendance
shifted an average of 4.6 days earlier over the 30 years.

In the
Grand Canyon, for example, the peak attendance date shifted
from July 4 in 1979 to June 24 in 2008.

Meanwhile, of the 18 parks without significant temperature
changes, only three had attendance shifts.

Buckley and Foushee caution that their analysis does not show
that climate change caused the shift in attendance; it simply
shows there is a relationship between the two phenomena. However,
this finding fits well with other evidence of
seasonal shifts among organisms.